​I sat down with Dr. Jayatri Das, the Chief Bioscientist at Philadelphia’s science museum, the Franklin Institute. I arrived at the Franklin on a cold Friday morning, just before the museum floor was set to open. As Dr. Das walked me towards a quiet place to chat I got a glimpse of the well-organized machine that is the Franklin - dozens of people preparing the exhibits for many visitors the museum will see that day. Dr. Das and I spoke about her role at the Franklin and how she inspires a love of science in the public.

What do you do at the Franklin?

My title is Chief Bioscientist. That means I do a lot of different kinds of projects. Broadly I’d say I develop biology-related science content. That includes designing science content for exhibits that you see on our floor, developing live programs, doing evening discussions about current science, collaborations with researchers. It really spans a wide scope of projects.​

What led you to the Franklin Institute?

What I like to say is that I started this career before I knew I did because I started doing science outreach for fun. In high school we would do science activities with elementary school kids. Then, in college I was in a couple of science organizations where we would do outreach. In grad school, I was part of an organization that sent grad students out to middle schools to do lessons.

All along the way I was preparing for this career without intentionally doing it. It wasn’t until I was finishing up grad school that I started to think about what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. You have that moment where the letters are in sight and you’re like, “now what do I do?!” I really loved research, but what I saw was that as people advance in academia they do less and less bench work. I felt like continuing along that path, even though I really loved what I was doing and I loved the project that I worked on for my PhD, I didn’t see myself fitting into that model 10 – 20 years down the road.

Right around the time when I was finishing grad school was also when the Kitzmiller v. Dover evolution trial was happening. That was kind of a wake up call, it got a lot of press at the time, it was like the Scopes trial part II. It made me realize that there is a lot of misunderstanding in science out there.

That’s when I started thinking about science communication, and thinking about ‘this is actually something that I really enjoy doing… that maybe there is something there’. At that point, I had already had a postdoc lined up at Penn, but in between finishing my PhD and Penn, I did the Christine Mirzayan Science and Technology Policy Fellowship through the National Academy of Sciences. I ended up doing my fellowship in their science museum, the Koshland Science Museum, and that was an amazing experience! I had a great mentor there who had also been a PhD scientist.

That was great, I got some actual experience under my belt, but then I still didn’t have a job! So, I came back and did my postdoc. While I was doing my postdoc I started volunteering at the Academy and keeping my eyes open for what opportunities there were. I started going to some science writers’ association meetings, thinking that might be a direction. Then, I got lucky! Because that was when the Franklin Institute was looking for an exhibit developer, specifically for a biologist because they were just starting the brain exhibit.​

In doing a lot of your volunteering in graduate school, you didn’t think of this as setting up a “Plan B” in case you didn’t like academia?

No, never! It was just fun. Which probably meant something… But what was cool was that I had inadvertently built up a portfolio by the time I realized this is a career. I grew up [in Philadelphia] and I came to the Franklin Institute all the time as a kid, I think I thought there were elves who made exhibits. I never really thought that there are jobs here. That was definitely a realization – oh wait, I can do back and do what I’ve always liked!​

​Do you feel having those experiences was crucial to getting jobs in the field?

Yes. I think that this is more and more common that as graduate students finish their PhD, the numbers don’t work. Not everyone can become tenured faculty. Obviously everyone is looking around for what other opportunities are there, and in a way it can be challenging because you don’t necessarily have concrete experience to put towards any of those. Having built up a body of work through my hobby allowed me to demonstrate that this was something I’m really serious and passionate about and not just ‘I need to find a job’.​

Do you feel you have the ‘bench’ aspect of your work that’s more hands on? What do you do that fulfills that?

Yes, part of what I love about my job is much more varied than doing the kind of experiments I was doing in grad school. For exhibits I work with a whole team here, but I work with very few other scientists. I work with graphic designers, exhibit designers, prototype designers (who are more like engineers). We all work together to put together exhibits, and the most intense part of that process is when we’re developing interactive devices. I do a lot of teamwork with the prototype designers especially, to figure out how to take a science concept and turn it into something engaging and interactive – that’s very experimental. We have an evaluator on our team who brings visitors in off the museum floor to test it out, to see whether they are learning the right thing, whether they know how to use it, are the having fun? There is a lot of experimentation and creativity there which is great.

I also really like talking about science! And I get to talk about science, a lot, which I love.​

​That’s such an important aspect of science. And, one that’s not always done well.

I know! That’s actually been a recent focus, to do more professional development for scientists. They just launched a new program called Portal to the Public that’s a science communication training program for scientists. We work with scientists on giving them skills in talking to the public. Both talking… and listening! That’s a direction that the field of science communication as a whole is going is - where can we have this be more of a dialogue and not a one-way flow of information from scientists to the public?​

How do you toe the line between simplifying complicated topics so that they can be understood and misrepresenting the science?

That is tricky and I think that’s where having a background in science really helps. We do have an external scientific advisory board for each one of our exhibits who helps us figure out where the boundaries are. I think that because I come from that world I can get a pretty good sense – I can read a paper and I know that this is as far as the interpretation goes and I can make sure that we’re representing that accurately.​

​How much do you feel like you’re influenced by the public perception of science and what’s being talked about? Do you feel compelled to address those issues?

With things that are more topical our exhibits don’t turn over fast enough. But, we do a lot of live programs. We just did a program on vaccines on Monday. Our goal is to try and create a different kind of conversation about it, so we don’t just want to have a debate that allows a false equality between two sides. And this is something we get push-back on. It’s an opportunity to both explain the science that sometimes gets lost, but also provide a forum for dialogue about the issues. The angle that we took for GMOs, for instance, was that maybe there is common ground between our needs for agriculture and sustainability if you break down GMOS into a case-by-case basis.​

Do you bring in experts for panel discussions?

Yes, and we try and bring in people with different perspectives. What’s interesting is that for both of [our more recent panels] one of our panelists was a social science researcher. For GMOs, we had someone who studies public attitudes and awareness of GMOs. For those of us who live and breath the science, it’s amazing to see their data that so many people know absolutely nothing about GMOS. Above all of the shouting that goes on from both sides, there is this huge number of people that are completely disengaged. But, whether we label or not, they’re still going to be affected. So how do we create awareness? More recently I’ve gotten more interested in people who do the research on the science of science communication. Looking at the psychology of communication and … how do we as a museum apply that research to what we do?​

Sometimes, in wanting to explain scientific concepts to non-scientists, it seems like a lot of what gets lost is because there isn’t an appreciation for science as a methodology, rather than a collection of facts. Do you feel there is any worth in explaining that?

​I think it depends because people are not rational, and that goes for everyone. Scientists are not rational either! There is not a single frame in which we can talk about all issues, because people are coming at it from different backgrounds. That’s why we really put this emphasis on dialogue. That can really help figure out where someone’s position is and then you can decide how do I then talk to them. If somebody’s position is based on their identity, if this belief is part of the social circle they identify with, then just giving them data is not going to change their mind.

A different approach is ‘let’s change what it means to have that identity’. If you tell people 99% of parents vaccinate and 95% of them do it on time. You hear so much about not vaccinating or delaying vaccination, then part of the identity is not vaccinating. Well, guess what? Most people do vaccinate! We have to be a little smarter in talking to people and not thinking that there is one approach that will solve every problem.​

Does the Franklin try to design exhibits for a wide range of ages?

It turns out that adults will absolutely say that if you create a space for them, it makes them want to come. We’ve been doing science after hours programs where we’re open late once a month and we get 2,000 people coming. And they’re psyched to be here! It’s not a question of designing different content, is a matter of messaging that this is a space for you. If our normal operating hours feels more like a space for families, we can open at a different time!

That being said, when it comes to designing exhibits for our building, we say that our target audience is families with kids between the ages of 8 and 13. That helps us focus a little bit, but making our exhibits accessible to everyone is always at the top of our mind. Even if our content is tailored to that sweet spot, there is something for everybody to do.

Actually that middle school level of science is really good for everyone! People who aren’t scientists don’t keep up with it. That’s one thing we learned about the brain when doing our advance evaluation – was that the 11 – 14 year olds knew more than the adults!​

Researchers put a lot of emphasis on the methods they use to answer scientific questions. In your exhibits, do you try to include not just what we know about x, y, and z, but how researchers discovered it?

That varies with exhibits because we tell a different story with every exhibit. There is not one approach that works for everything. With the brain, for example, we’re really able to dive into both sides of the story because… that’s really exciting right now. How people are learning about the brain is part of the story, that’s very much influencing what we know.

We had a very high-level concept when we started [on the brain exhibit] that was very central to our exhibit. We have been trying to learn about the brain for thousands of years, but our understanding was always limited by what we were able to see about the brain. We had this whole part trying to demonstrate that what we know about the brain is still limited by the tools that we have to study it and this may all change. Anyway, that was a grand idea that failed miserably! Because ultimately what we discovered was that when people interact with an exhibit here they expect to learn something that is true. And so people interacting with that part of the exhibit were taking home the wrong thing!

That really changed our approach the to exhibit, so we changed to a more personal approach – let’s just talk about your brain and what it does at different levels of function. The methodology story ended up being much more subtly infused into that.​

What is your goal for every exhibit?

Our very basic goal is to inspire, to get people to be curious, to ask questions, to think about it. If they walk out with knowledge, that’s great! But, it’s more about developing a relationship with science. Our mission is to inspire a love of science and technology learning, which is a lot fuzzier than testing people when they walk out, did you learn X, Y, and Z? In a way, that’s harder to quantify, but the idea is that long term it’s much more impactful.

One of the reasons I came to a science museum was that acute realization that people did not understand evolution, but the solution to that is not to go around preaching Charles Darwin to everybody. It has to start much earlier. If you don’t have an appreciation for science and understand why it is relevant to you, then you are never going to get to the point where you’re willing to give Charles Darwin a chance. Our goal is to open people's minds to how fascinating science is, and the way we do that is to help them understand why it’s relevant to them.​

Do you think that different ages that get inspired by different kinds of interactions?

Oh definitely! And age may not even be the most important determinant. Sometimes little kids have incredible focus, they can get so into something that their parents don’t know anything about. Age is oversimplifying it a little bit. But, the general idea that different people are engaged by different concepts it absolutely true and why we try and create a diversity of experience, not just diversity of content, but diversity of what things look like.